Huzarzy Poland
Huzarzy Poland (Polish: Huzarzy Polska) is the common English name for the period in Polish history from September 24th, 1939 to September 10th, 1940, when the Second Polish Republic was replaced by a Pro-German fascist government under the leadership of Władysław Studnicki during the Versailles War. Established following the September 24th, 1939 Danzig Pact, Huzarzy Poland was created in reaction to the halted invasion of Poland. Adolf Hitler had initially wanted to divide Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union but following the death of Chairman Josef Stalin and the expulsion of German Diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler commenced his invasion of Poland of September 1st, 1939 hoping to take advantage of the chaos in the Soviet Union even without the Non-Aggression Treaty. However with the Soviet political re-organization and election of Mikhail Kalinin, Hitler feared having to fight not only the Soviets and Polish to the east but the French to the west. Hitler called for a peace treaty with the Poles (despite having just invaded their country) however this peace treaty was more so a document of surrender as Hitler wanted to convert Poland into a client state that it could use to hold off the invading Soviets. Hitler formed an Anti-Communist Pact known as the Danzig Pact with Polish politician Władysław Studnicki (who would be later termed the Scavenius of Poland) alongside Polish fascist Bolesław Piasecki (known as the Himmler of Poland) and General Edward Rydz-Śmigły. They cited their common goals of anti-communism, nationalism and "removal" of Jews. Bolesław Piasecki forms the far-right Hussaria Party (Polish: Huzarzy Partia) named after the Polish Hussars which acts as the governing body of Huzarzy Poland during its short history. In exchange for Germany withdrawing all claims to Poland (except for the territories Germany lost to Poland following the Treaty of Versailles which included the Polish Pomeranian Voivodeship, Silesian Voivodeship and Poznań Voivodeship) Germany would supply Poland with arms to fight the Soviet Union and push back the “Judeo-Bolshevik forces”. Hitler also ceded the Cieszyn Silesia or Zaolzie region of the Czech Republic to Poland as a concession. Hitler reluctantly declares that since Poles are the ancestors of the Wendish People/Wends like other West Slavic people they are considered partially Germanic due to contact between Western Slavs and Germanic tribes over the centuries. The Western Slavs are described as native peoples who were corrupted by Eastern Slavic influence over the centuries. However, the Eastern Slavs remain non-German as such were treated as a lesser race than Western Slavs and Germans. While not equal to Aryan Germans, Western Slavs were above Jews, Roma and Eastern Slavs (Ukrainians, Russians, Belorussians). However following the secret October 1st, 1939 Teutonic Speech given by Hitler, these promises proved to be false as the Nazis planned to use the Poles to wear down the Soviets before the Germans crushed both the Poles and the Soviets. The Huzarzy Party sought to expel Jews and Eastern Slavs from Polish territory while also conquering all land that was once Polish (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Polish Kingdom under the Piast Dynasty) as a purely ethnically Polish state. As Poland had been cut off once again from the sea by the German annexation of the Polish Corridor, the Poles planned to invade, annex and Polonize Lithuania and the Baltic States as well as Ukraine and Belarus. As tensions were already great between Poland and the USSR before the war due to the Polish-Soviet War of the 1920’s, many Poles would side with Studnicki seeing him and the Germans as a better chance for Polish survival than the Soviets. Studnicki had drawn support from antisemitic Poles and supporters of Roman Dmowski, a notable Polish nationalist that had died only months earlier. While Hitler had capitulated to some Poles out of necessity this was a blow to his pride and he would then order Alfred Rosenberg to begin Operation Schäfer, the systematic deportation (and seizure of their property) of all Jews from Axis territory to the Lublin Reservation. As the Nazis did not have the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact they wanted with the Soviets to get the resources they needed, they decided that using the Jews as slave labor rather than just massacring them was more helpful. As such Jews from all over would be deported at gun-point to smaller ghettos which from there they would be transferred to Lublin (which had been evacuated of all ethnic Poles) where they would be imprisoned and forced to work in factories to feed the growing Axis war machine. The Lublin Reservation was a collection of Ghetto-Prison Camps in the marshy Polesian region of the Lublin Voivodeship. While Studnicki protested to this being on Polish territory he accepted seeing as how it was on the front-lines and would be needed to produce arms for the war effect. German Nazi Odilo Globocnik and Polish Huzarzy Bolesław Piasecki were put in charge of managing the Lublin Reservation. This mass deportation of Jews would become known as the Mizrekh Marts as the Jews were forced in a death march to the Lublin Reservation. The Democratic Alliance and Soviet Union viewed the Huzarzy government as illegitimate but the Democratic Alliance supported Ignacy Mościcki and the Polish government in exile whereas the Soviets supported a communist Polish government under Bolesław Bierut. History -September 1st, 1939: Nazi Germany invades Poland -September 3rd, 1939: Germany annexes the Free City of Danzig. -September 3rd, 1939: The Bromberg Massacre occurs with many ethnic German civilians are killed in the Polish city of Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) by the Polish military. -September 6th, 1939: Germans capture Krakow putting the Polish Army on the retreat. -September 9th, 1939: German forces begin sieging the Polish capital of Warsaw. -September 10th, 1939: German forces take Brest and Lviv. -September 22nd, 1939: German forces capture the Second Polish Republic. -September 24th, 1939: The Danzig Pact is signed by German Hans-Adolf von Moltke and Polish Władysław Studnicki establishing the Pro-German Polish Client state known as Huzarzy Poland. Bolesław Piasecki establishes the Husaria Party (Polish: Huzarzy Partia). -September 25th, 1939: Adolf Hitler gives the go-ahead to Alfred Rosenberg to begin Operation Shepherd (German: Unternehmen Schäfer, Polish: Akcja Pasterz). This begins the mass deportation of Jews from Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia to the Lublin Reservation. -September 30th, 1939: Soviet and Polish resistance forces retake the Kresy and establish a line along the Bug River. -October 7th, 1939: The combined Huzarzy Army, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks and Romanian forces create Chișinău Line (better known as the Kishinev Line) following the border from Romanian Chișinău, along Hungary and merging with the Polish Line to Konigsberg in East Prussia against the Soviet Army. -October 9th, 1939: A Soviet backed power-struggle begins amongst the Free Polish Army which results in the Polish communist, Bolesław Bierut, taking control of the Free Polish Army as a communist aligned organization. This new force would be known as the Polish Liberation Front. This led many Poles who disagreed with communism to flee to the fascist Huzarzy Army or flee to France to form the Armia Krajowa led by Władysław Sikorski which was loyal to the Polish government-in-exile. The Polish government led by Ignacy Mościcki establishes a government-in-exile in the French city of Paris. -October 11th, 1939: In Poland, Polish resistance fighters would begin building defenses along the Bug River and Polish Line against the German forces in the west. This would lead to a military stalemate and mimic conditions from the Great War as both sides constructed trenches. However, the trenches proved ineffective to tanks as such many Soviets started developed more powerful anti-tank mines and anti-tank weaponry. Polish soldiers known as Górniczy (Miners in Polish) would travel into no-man’s land in the dead of night and risk their lives to plant anti-tank mines in urban chokepoints. The border between East and West Poland was a scorched battlefield. Many would construct “Dragon’s Teeth” and “Czech Hedgehogs” notable anti-tank barriers as well as employ landmines and barbed wire. -December 20th, 1939: Commander Bolesław Piasecki of Huzarzy Poland, emboldened by the German capture of Paris begins the mass internment of Ukrainians and other Eastern Slavs in factory-prisons like the Lublin Reservation. Chancellor Władysław Studnicki who had been helping rebuild and re-arm the Polish Huzarzy Army with German aid calls for the invasion of Lithuania. The Polish-Soviet Front had been a stalemate since the initial Soviet push into eastern Poland due to the heavy armaments lining the front. -December 31st, 1939: The Polish Huzarzy Army led by General Lucjan Żeligowski (who had led Żeligowski's Mutiny only 19 years earlier) begins the invasion of Lithuania. -January 1st, 1940: President Antanas Smetona of Lithuania sends an ambassador to Mikhail Kalinin reasserting their Mutual Assistance Treaty and asking for aid to fight back the invading Huzarzy soldiers. -January 17th, 1940: Huzarzy forces capture the capital of Lithuania, Kaunas. Lithuanian Jews flee eastward to the Soviet Union. -January 27th, 1940: Polish Huzarzy forces push east into the northern section of the Kresy capturing Vilnius. -February 5th, 1940: Soviet forces begin amassing in Minsk pulling forces from their southern defenses. German forces use this as a means to strike eastward into the Soviet occupied Kresy and take western Ukraine. -February 7th, 1940: Axis forces manage to push the Soviets out of the Polish Kresy region. -February 19th, 1940: Soviet forces invade Huzarzy controlled Lithuania, they are bolstered by Lithuanian communists and pro-democracy Lithuanian forces. -February 26th, 1940: Soviet forces manage to recapture Vilnius. -March 1st, 1940: Axis forces capture Kiev in an attempt to encircle Soviet forces concentrated in the north. Polish Huzarzy forces stationed in Kiev massacre the Ukrainian population. -April 2nd, 1940: With Soviet troops stationed in Vilnius and now in Daugavpils, they begin a two-pronged invasion of Lithuania from the east and the north. -April 12th, 1940: Soviet forces capture Kaunas and push the Polish out of Lithuania. -May 26th, 1940: Polish forces manage to capture Minsk, Belarus from the Soviets. -June 10th, 1940: Huzarzy soldiers seeing the Soviets closing in and under order from begin liquidating the Ukrainian and Jewish Camps and massacre thousands of ethnic Ukrainians and Jews. -June 20th, 1940: The Nazi and Huzarzy forces begin the liquidation of the entire Jewish population of the Lublin Reservation. -June 21st, 1940: The Lublin Uprising occurs with the Yidishe Bafreyung Farband arming the Jewish prisoners of the Lublin Reservation against the Nazi government. The YBF’s commander, Tuvia Bielski, had managed to receive backing from the Soviet military and had been smuggling weapons into Lublin to prepare for this. Around 1,000 Jewish partisan soldiers storm the Polish-Soviet border to aid in the uprising. They quickly arm thousands of Jewish prisoners who revolt against the Nazi military and while bloody manage to retake the city of Lublin. Now with around 2,500 Jewish soldiers they manage to push back fascist Polish forces until reinforcements from the Soviets arrived. This would become known as the Battle of Lublin and is lauded as one of the truly greatest moments in Jewish history. They manage to liberate Lublin, Lviv, Rzeszow, Bialystok and Brest. -June 22nd, 1940: Soviet forces recapture Minsk. -August 17th, 1940: The Soviet Union begins the invasion of Huzarzy Poland where they meet up with the Yidishe Bafreyung Farband and use the city of Lublin as a mid-point. Two sections break off, one goes north to Warsaw while the other goes south to Krakow. -August 21st, 1940: Soviets capture the Polish city of Krakow. -August 30th, 1940: Soviets capture the Polish city of Warsaw. During the Battle of Warsaw much of the city would be destroyed and nearly burnt to the ground by the sheer violence and most of its population driven out as battles took place on city streets. -September 5th, 1940: Members of the Yidishe Bafreyung Farband capture Huzarzy Commander Bolesław Piasecki who is imprisoned back in Moscow. Chancellor Władysław Studnicki is captured as well but he quickly commits suicide. -September 10th, 1940: The Soviet fully liberates Poland. Many Poles living in eastern Poland flee to the West to escape being under Soviet control. Polish Nationalists who served in the Huzarzy Army would go into hiding and join the Polish nationalist organization known as the Mieszko Front formed later. -September 15th, 1940: Polish Huzarzy soldiers are executed en masse by Soviet forces. Around 6,000 Huzarzy soldiers and officers are executed in the neighboring town of Bolimów. This would become known as the Bolimów Massacre despite its victims being primarily fascist sympathizers. -October 22nd, 1940: The Polish Democratic Republic is established as a Soviet Satellite State. Category:Countries